


Between

by offbrandgizmo



Series: Filling the Nett Void [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, But in reality sort of a, Character Study, Fluff, Handholding, I don't even know if that's a thing, I'm just filling the Nett void, M/M, Relationship Study, Sort Of, Stargazing, There's not a lot of both but there's some, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 08:46:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13948005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: But Brett stays in the between, too.‘Maybe I like it,’ he says.





	Between

He’s grateful, really. Obviously he’s grateful. How many people does he know who’d answer a call at three in the morning and agree to meet with him just because he can’t sleep?

How many people has he ever known who’d do that?

He doesn’t have to dig deep to find the answer— _very few_.

And yet, here he is, lying on his back, arms folded behind his head and little drops of dew clinging to his clothes as he stares up at the stars. It’s not the first time he’s been here, at the park a few blocks from his house, and it’s not even the first time he’s been here in the dead of night. But it’s the first time he’s ever been here and not been alone.

Still, he tilts his head to the side, and he knows in an instant that the boy lying beside him doesn’t fit.

Nolan fits this park like a glove. He fits its spaces and fills its gaps because he grew up here; spent so many years using the swing to almost touch the sky. And then when gravity decided to catch up with him—and hit him like a train—he took to sitting at the top of the slide, playing with the world as he refused to descend, because if the world had decided that he needed to suddenly feel down and afraid and outcast, and all of the bad things, all of the time, then he’d do his damned best to prove it all wrong and stay as above it as he could.

He hadn’t sat at the top of the slide for a long time now, though.

Brett, though. Nolan stares at Brett, who agreed somehow, through Nolan’s timid a.m. phone call, to meet him on the other side of town at some blatantly terrifying old children’s park, and he sees… someone foreign, and strange. He doesn’t recognise Brett in this place.

His limbs are too long and his eyes are too sharp. Even now, his legs are folded over the top of one another and his elbows jut out from behind his head like daggers. In the park’s soft edges, Brett has to carve out his own spaces because he doesn’t fit in the ones that have always existed, that’ve always been there. He looks at the stars like he’s searching for something and they’re disappointing him because he can’t find it. Nolan’s not even sure he knows what that means.

‘You’re staring,’ Brett drops his neck idly to the side, meeting Nolan’s eyes. Nolan yanks away, forcing his head back towards the stars and away from the startling green before he drowns in it, and when that’s not enough, he sits up, dropping his arms around his knees as he pulls them in close to his chest.

He hasn’t said a word since Brett found him at the park and soundlessly laid next to him. Because Brett demands nothing from him, nothing at all, nothing ever. Sometimes his expectations are so vague it feels like he doesn’t even expect that Nolan will really exist the next time they see each other. But if he says something now, then he has to admit that Brett is here; that he is here with Brett, and that they both really exist in this moment.

He hears Brett sigh but he keeps his neck attentively pushed back as though he’s looking up at the stars even though his eyes are closed. He doesn’t know why he wants to will Brett away so thoroughly even though sometimes the werewolf is the only thing that keeps him standing.

And so, before Brett can say what Nolan knows he’ll say next, because he’s heard the words so many times before— _maybe I liked it—_ Nolan drops his head sideways and fixes his eyes on the point between the edge of Brett’s jaw and the corner of his lips. He can meet him halfway. He can be good at that.

He can see out of the tops of his eyes that Brett’s gaze is fixed on his face, but he stays resolute and lets his vision go fuzzy as he fixes to the neutral point. No harm done, he’s not looking at his eyes, or his lips, or even his strong, angled jawline. He’s just… between. Between it all. Between is a safe place to be.

One thing that’s immeasurably easy with Brett is time. So much time can pass and neither of them will feel it—at least, Nolan’s pretty sure that Brett finds it easy, too. He can’t be certain, but he doesn’t think Brett would be around him so often if he couldn’t tolerate the way time flickers and fades whenever Nolan fixes on something. He doesn’t know how long he fixes on the _indistinct_ of Brett’s face, but it’s long enough that he feels his neck stiffen and he knows it’ll hurt to move.

And maybe it’s the exhaustion, the total of six hours sleep in the last week catching up and wrapping itself around him, but Nolan feels his resolve drip away gradually, can almost feel the tougher parts of his skin peeling away like dust. So he blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, he lets them catch on Brett’s, tries to make it look like an accident, like he was going to start staring at his hairline instead, but got stuck. And because he doesn’t want to have a conversation through their now-locked eyes—because the things that they could give away aren’t things he’s certain he’ll ever be ready to give—he breaks his rule and parts his lips.

‘You’re staring,’ he breathes, for lack of anything else to say. If he parrots, he’s safe, because technically he can still be in the between if he doesn’t say anything new. But his skin is starting to feel cold again and he knows he’s slowly slipping away from the safe and back into the real.

Brett’s response is a hum, the kind Nolan wishes he could feel beneath his fingertips if he was ever allowed to place them gently along Brett’s neck. He wishes he could run them over his Adam’s apple, feel Brett swallowing in response to something he said; something he did.

But Brett stays in the between, too. He sits comfortably in their between, their own personal, unspoken _safe_ , because _we can get back from this without crossing any points of no return_ , and he says nothing new, either, so as not to disrupt the steady static they’ve built up for want of not getting it all muddied up and complicated.

‘Maybe I like it,’ he says.

Nolan’s fairly sure it’s wishful thinking that makes it look like the stars are showing themselves off in Brett’s eyes, using their reflections to try and cover up maybe the one thing in the world that’s even more beautiful than them. It makes him hate the stars a little.

And that thought is what starts the tears.

Nolan feels them build, feels them well up and dare him to blink, to let them fall. In the final moment that Nolan is able to keep them from escaping over his eyelashes, Brett looks away, giving him the lonely solitude to cry without disarming himself completely.

Nolan doesn’t want it.

But telling Brett that would take them out of the between, out of the safe, out of the we-can-come-back-from-this.

The tears stop and it frustrates Nolan to no end. It’s like Brett was the thing keeping them there, the reason that they threatened to boil over and burn red tracks down his cheeks. But Brett looked away and stole Nolan’s ability to find some form of emotional release. And Nolan wants it back.

Maybe it’s the frustration that takes him over the line. Or the want. Or the loneliness.

Maybe it’s just because he’s so tired.

But he parts his lips again, and this time he doesn’t bother to speak through his teeth or use his breath to coat the words in a barrier to prevent the damage.

‘Please,’ he says, and it’s something new.

And part of him feels guilty, guilty that he’s stolen this from Brett. Because Brett won’t be able to come back from this either, but he didn’t have any say in it. This was all just Nolan, at its most violent and raw, dragging him over the line and spitting terrifying, new words at them that made Brett angry enough to sink his claws into Nolan’s hand and refuse to let him go.

It’s softer, in reality. Brett doesn’t meet his eyes, but he reaches out with an arm that still seems too long to belong in the park. His fingers feel too long when he places one hand on top of Nolan’s. Nolan keeps his fist clenched because he’s absolutely certain that Brett’s fingers won’t fit, that they’ll discover they’ve come to a place where neither one of them can ever really be _warm-safe-comfortable-happy_ again.

Nolan’s only ever been so strong, though, and he figures he owes it to Brett to at least try, after he was the one who pulled them out of the halfway. So he slowly softens his grip on himself—and he _knows_ Brett can feel the tremors quaking all the way down through his fingertips—and allows Brett’s fingers to fall through the gaps, a part of him praying, in spite of himself, that Brett won’t have to dig out his own spaces in between Nolan’s softer ones.

Brett’s fingers are long, and his hands are big. Too long, too big, but only for a moment. When he slowly curls them in towards Nolan’s palm, making their hands one solid object, like an immovable rock that’s spent years embedding itself into the bottom of a stream, Nolan’s convictions are shattered and the tears come again.

It’s a relief, really, that Brett doesn’t let go but doesn’t have to look as Nolan cries.

**Author's Note:**

> This was basically just an excuse to fill the Nett shaped void in my heart but all they even did was hold hands, holy shit.
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr @ offbrandgizmo and Twitter @ harmlesskillua. I'll totally accept requests or prompts for Nett!


End file.
